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“Stupidity.”
“Innocence. You’re trusting, and I’m sure you’re very book smart, but I’m guessing your time in the stacks of your ivy league school didn’t really prepare you for some of the stuff life has thrown at you. Your ex is a dick. He took advantage of you.”
“Well, it won’t happen again. I thought...the way he took care of me...all my life, I thought men would take care of me. That’s how I was raised. My grandparents loved me, but they brought me up in a way that I would always rely on someone else. But there is no one else. There is only me.”
I think about my mom and how she thought men were there to take care of her too.
“So why business school? Why is that so important to you?”
“Isn’t that what men do to show they’re serious? The world respects businesspeople. They don’t respect poets.”
“And that’s what you want? Respect?”
“I want never to be taken for a fool again. Yes, I want respect.” She’s practically grinding her teeth. “Tomorrow, I’m looking at the books.”
Now she’s set my teeth on edge. “Respect goes both ways, Robert Frost. Try to remember I’m not the asshole who took you for every penny you had while you pull the rug out from under my life, yeah?”
I slam the door of my bedroom like a sullen teenage girl. She makes me crazy and I’ve known her for less than a day. I make it a practice to never be angry or emotional about things—life is easier when you just take it as it comes. This poet with more control of my business than I have is going to have to go.
Tru
I’VE BEEN HERE FORthree weeks now, meshing myself into the rhythm of Nash’s life whether he likes it or not. Every day, I’m surprised not to find my things on the curb. Every day, he tells me something about having his lawyer look over things, or we’ll work on fixing the place up later, or he’s thinking of a way to buy me out.
Every day, we do the same as the last. We eat, we work, we watch some interminable sports program on the television. The bar runs itself. He closes early every night. He has no patience for drunk people. I don’t understand why people keep coming. I do understand why it doesn’t make more than it needs to keep the doors open—but Nash is reluctant to do anything about it.
He likes Ironwing the way it is. And if I didn’t need to figure out how to get out of here, I’d like how it is too.
It’s a slow evening, so I brought my textbooks for next semester downstairs with me. I haven’t actually been accepted into the program yet, but I figure getting a head start can’t hurt. Nash is pretending to polish a glass, but I can feel him looking at me. I try to ignore him while I take an inventory of all the ways I’m not ignoring him. His scent, I’m not ignoring that. It’s alluring and sexy, and I know for a fact he doesn’t use cologne. It’s all him. It’s powerful and virile and all the things I never thought I liked. The undertones are bone-meltingly good and zing me in all the places I ought not to be zinging if I value my pride.
I also don’t ignore the weight of his stare. It presses on me like he’s always trying to uncover something more. Like my secret shame is somehow up for grabs.
And then there’s the energy around him that I can’t ignore. It’s like a swirling vortex of...no...actually, it’s like a bug light. It attracts me even though I know it will zap me if I go anywhere near it.
Finally, unable to deny him any longer, I look up at him from my book.
He searches my gaze for a minute, but I don’t know what he’s looking for. “You can't learn life from books.”
